Each month, I contribute to the Fort Myers Beach Chamber of Commerce newsletter, in what we call “Techie Bits”. Each month, I provide useful information for the Chamber members about web development, branding, marketing, internet, and digital technology.

Here is the latest post for March 2009:

Techie Bits

by BrianJosephStudios.com

Welcome to the sixth edition of “Techie Bits”! Each month we provide useful information about computers, the internet, web design, branding and much more! We live in an electronic, digital world and we are here to help you maximize your personal and your company’s use of all of these tools.

This month: Email Marketing – The Most Cost Efficient Way to Build A Strong Customer Base

Email marketing is the direct marketing process of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience usually with the purpose of enhancing the relationship a business has with a current customer or vendor in an effort to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business. It is also used to bring in new customers and generate increased revenue. With the internet being almost everyone’s main source for information, print advertising is currently fading to the background. Newspaper and magazine sales are declining rapidly in this digital age and it is important that your marketing strategy follows this shift in the advertising market. Email marketing is by far one of the most inexpensive forms of communicating with potential and current customers, and it provides the most powerful form of tracking your return on investment second only to search engine marketing.

Services like “ConstantContact.com” provide easy-to-use online tools to send out email marketing campaigns, and track each view of your email along with every click on a link within that email. All you have to do is simply obtain the email addresses of your customers and organize them in an excel sheet. Upload them to Constant Contact and you now have your Email Marketing recipients list that you can continually expand upon. As mentioned in December’s “Techie Bits”, your current customer base is vitally important to ensure survival during this tough economy, and the most efficient way to communicate to them, at the lowest cost, is email marketing. Email Brian at [email protected] if you would like to know more about what email marketing can do for your business.